Useful for sliding cables, snakes, spines, etc. Give it a curve and it gives you slidey joints and a few binding options.

Blizzard Entertainment

Renderman crowd rendering system written in Python. Property of Blizzard Entertainment.

My primary focus is on character rigging and pipeline. At Blizzard I was a main architect of a Python based, object oriented rigging pipeline that rigged everything from simple props to giant demons. I also wrote many tools and backend systems, including a character caching system that moved manual caching by the artist to a farm based automated solution.

A layered skin solution in nCloth, simulating flesh on an undead dragon. Property of Blizzard Entertainment.

I was given the opportunity to work with the talented modeling and animation team at Blizzard rigging iconic characters like Deathwing, Diablo, Sindragosa, and more. Additionally I rigged and simulated cloth, hair, and even some environments, and helped to extend the character rigging system with a Python based nCloth management module that aided sim rig creation.

The scripted character pipeline meant all characters could be rebuilt at any time, absorbing production changes. The caching system meant those changes could be re-baked out of animation and delivered to lighting quickly. The object oriented interface allowed junior level TDs to create character rigging scripts with ease, often in less than 100 lines of code, using prebuilt classes known as 'limbs' from which their rigs could be assembled. At the same time it provided enough flexibility for senior artists to create complex, custom facial rig setups that could handle dialogue and emotion. Those, however, were usually more than 100 lines :)

I was responsible for the character rig, cloth simulation, and hair simulation on this character/shot. Cloth/Hair rigs by Scott Lange, Jim Jiang, and Becca Baldwin. Property of Blizzard Entertainment.

As the main Maya plug-in programmer for the tech art team I created deformers and tools to help with character deformation, simulation, and hair grooming. When we needed real programmers to do our heavy lifting I was the primary interface with the Cinematics RnD team :)

In early 2013 I left Blizzard to get a full time education in drawing in painting, which is my second love. I occasionally do visual effects work on a contract basis.